Friday Roundup

Friday has come and gone, mid-term Grade Reports are out and the weekend is here. We have our visas and my cousins Bill and Linda are coming next Friday to visit us. We got word late last night that one of the families who have been waiting in the USA for their visas to be approved now has their visas and will be arriving soon. Liz had her hair colored and highlighted yesterday after school and it looks great! How can life get any better?

Well, actually it is better than what I listed above. We see God’s hand working in our classrooms and lives each day here. There are just a number of things that happen here that make it evident that God is really guiding our steps and lighting our paths as we go through each day at school. Somehow unplanned (by us) things just happen that fit into our teaching routines extremely well. Class then becomes more than a success and we wonder, “how did that happen?” The pieces of the lesson fell together beautifully -more beautifully than if we were calling the shots.

We help one another get through the day at school and fill the gaps as best we can. Yesterday I “taught” (I was given lesson plans) a period of World History to the freshmen and sophomores. The class was a delight to teach as the students listened, worked cooperatively and were even disappointed when they were not able to finish their work when school was over – the last period on Friday! Yesterday was a student service day project and students – both large and small – worked around the school’s playground area pulling weeds, raking leaves, cleaning out gutters, cleaning out the sand box areas, etc. Neither of us participated as we were teaching the period when this was going, but it was reported as a great success.

Liz went to her hair appointment at 4:00 PM while Rachel and I went to what I think is Prague’s biggest mall about 4:30. I wanted two items. Some more cup hooks to put up in the kitchen to hang more items in handy reach and a lamp to put in the living room so I can read better while seated on the sofa. We were successful on both counts. The mall was on the extreme east side of Prague so it took us more than thirty minutes to get there. Liz called just as we were getting on the metro to leave to say that she was done a bit earlier than anticipated with her hair appointment. Since neither Rachel nor I had given Liz keys to the apartment, she would go to a nearby restaurant and wait for us there. This particular restaurant is the one run by a family who has a child at the school. It is a new place with lovely décor and superb food. We knew she would get there about thirty minutes before Rae and I did.

We took a chance on our return journey and went on a route that I had never been on before, but which seemed like it should be shorter. Instead of taking the metro the whole way and going too far west and coming back east, I decided that we could get off the metro and take a tram south at the appropriate stop. The only problem was we did not know where to get on the tram. We knew to look for signs pointing to the tram when we got off the metro, but there were tram signs pointing in both directions upon exiting the metro. Of course the signs were also filled with words unintelligible to me, so we took a guess and went left. At first our choice looked promising as we spotted a tram stop just we left the metro station. But there was no Tram 10 listed on the sign – which is what we needed to get back to Zizkov where we live. We crossed the street and looked at the tram stop sign there – but no Tram 10 here either.
We saw a young man who looked like he might speak English and asked him about Tram 10. This turned out to be a good move as he knew just enough English to tell us to go around the next corner to another tram stop if we wanted to go to Zizkov. We arrived at the stop and almost immediately a tram 10 pulled in so we got on and then began figuring out where to get off. We knew we were on the right tram as it was headed toward Flora – a small mall within walking distance of our apartment. We got off at the Perunova stop as we knew that it was fairly close to the restaurant we were to meet Liz. We began walking down the street and saw the tram stop again – just at the corner where the restaurant is.

We found Liz looking beautiful in her new do and with a large plate of nachos – more than half of which were uneaten. So we indulged ourselves in nachos, caught up on the day’s events with the kids, and ordered more food and drink. Liz described many events of the day with her charges and spent much of the description is nearly uncontrollable laughter because of the personalities in her classroom and the extraordinary things that happened. We somewhat personified the loud Americans so famous in Europe – oh well – laughter is good for us.

Shortly after our food arrived, a group of four more teachers from CISP arrived to eat. We chatted a while and explained what we had ordered – mousaka and a monte-christo sandwich. Then back to the serious business of eating before paying the bill and heading home. It was 8:30 by the time we got home, so all we did before retiring was to read email and news on the computers. I think Rachel did have a long conversation with her significant other – who is in Azerbyjan.

Today, Saturday, we are going on a four mile walk led by a Czech from the Baptist Church we have been attending. We plan to do some housecleaning before leaving for the walk around 10:30 this morning.